Hurricane Irma slams Caribbean islands as it heads toward Puerto Rico

An extremely dangerous Hurricane Irma smashed small northern Caribbean islands Wednesday morning as one of the strongest storms recorded in the Atlantic — and is on a path to hit parts of the British Virgin Islands and perhaps skirt northern Puerto Rico later in the day.

Irma’s core, with maximum sustained winds of 185 mph — well above the 157 mph threshold of a Category 5 — slammed Barbuda early Wednesday before hitting St. Martin and Anguilla.

Early reports suggested major damage on some of the smaller islands — part of a tropical region popular with tourists.

Barbuda, home to about 1,600 people, was “so badly damaged that there is no communication” from the island, said Keithley Meade, director of a meteorological office in Antigua and Barbuda.

“We have a lot of broken trees across the island,” Meade said from Antigua, whose 80,000 people comprise most of the two-island nation’s population.

Irma destroyed four of the most solid government buildings on theFrench-administered portion of nearby St. Martin, an island of about 75,000 people, French Interior Minister Gérard Collomb said Wednesday in Paris.

It’s likely that all other older buildings there have at least been damaged, he said.

Virginia Barreras told CNN she was riding out the storm on the tiny island in a “sanctuary hotel” where tourists and locals were encouraged to check in before the eye wall hit.

“The palm trees are bent over and (I) can’t see anything but white,” she said early Wednesday, before Irma’s core passed. “The walls shake when the wind blows hard, and we can hear debris being thrown around.

The hurricane battered a string of northern Caribbean island nations, situated east of the generally more populous Virgin Islands group and Puerto Rico.

Roughly 10 of these smaller islands — such as St. Martin, Antigua and Barbuda, and St. Kitts and Nevis — were pounded by hurricane conditions. One, Guadeloupe, has about 405,000 residents. The rest have about 264,400 people combined.

Latest developments

— Around 11 a.m. ET Wednesday, Irma’s core was spinning about 65 miles east-southeast of St. Thomas of the US Virgin Islands, with maximum sustained winds of 185 mph.

—After slamming St. Martin and Anguilla and St. Kitts and Nevis in the morning, the storm is expected to be near the British Virgin Islands and northern US Virgin Islands later Wednesday.

— The storm’s center is then expected to pass near or just north of Puerto Rico on Wednesday afternoon or night.

— By Thursday and Friday, Irmais likely to be near the Dominican Republic’s and Haiti’s northern coasts, the Turks and Caicos islands and the southeastern Bahamas, where storm surges of up to 20 feet are possible, the hurricane center said.

— It’s too early to tell whether it will make landfall on the US mainland. Computer models show it could churn near Florida’s east coast by late Sunday, and forecasters warn the core still could hit land there.

— People in Florida should heed any evacuation order, Gov. Rick Scott said Wednesday. “(A) storm surge could cover your house. We can rebuild homes — we cannot rebuild your family,” he said.

— In the US Virgin Islands, Gov. Kenneth E. Mapp ordered a 36-hour curfew that started at 6 a.m. local time Wednesday.

— The season opener for the NFL’s Miami Dolphins and Tampa Bay Buccaneers has been postponed Sunday in Miami because of Irma. The game will instead be played in Miami on November 19.

‘We’ve been hiding in the bathroom’

Irma affected many northern Caribbean islands Wednesday, even those not touched by the powerful core. In Marigot, Guadeloupe, Florida resident Loren Ann Mayo rode out the storm on the sixth floor of a beachside hotel.

“We’ve been hiding in the bathroom,” she said in a video she posted to Facebook. About an inch of water covered parts of the floor, and pieces of drywall had fallen onto a balcony and a bed inside, she said.

Mayo was there on a business trip. “It is pouring down rain. It is howling,” she told CNN. “Most people are either in their bathroom, or they’ve been moved downstairs to the third floor where management thinks is a very, very safe spot.”

Islands under hurricane warning includeAnguilla, Antigua, Barbuda, Puerto Rico, the US and British Virgin Islands, Montserrat, St. Kitts and Nevis, Saba, St. Eustatius, St. Martin/St. Maarten, St. Barts, the Dominican Republic from Cabo Engano to the northern border with Haiti, Guadeloupe, the southeastern Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands.

Puerto Rico: Long lines

Storm surge is a concern for the Virgin Islands (up to 11 feet) and Puerto Rico (up to 5 feet), as is heavy rain (up to 10 inches in the Virgin Islands, and up to 15 in parts of Puerto Rico).

Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló declared a state of emergency and has activated the National Guard.

For hours, people lined up outside hardware stores, hoping to get plywood, batteries and power generators. If Irma knocks out power, Puerto Ricans said it could take weeks or months before it is restored.

Last month, the director of Puerto Rico’s power utility, Ricardo Ramos Rodríguez, said several factors have made the island’s electric system “vulnerable and fragile,” CNN affiliate WAPA reported.

One of those is the shortage of employees. Many workers recently retired or left their jobs for better prospects on the US mainland, Ramos Rodríguez said.

Turks and Caicos and the Bahamas

Forecasters warn that Irma’s likely path will be near the Turks and Caicos Islands on Thursday and the southeastern Bahamas on Friday — and that the destruction could be devastating.

In the Bahamas, emergency evacuations have been ordered for six southern islands — Mayaguana, Inagua, Crooked Island, Acklins, Long Cay and Ragged Island.

“This is the largest such evacuation in the history of the country,” Prime Minister Hubert Minnis said.

Bahamian officials also canceled vacation time for police and defense forces.

“Some of the (Bahamian) islands aren’t more than 9 feet (above sea level). Storm surges there may be 20 feet. You get the idea what’s going to happen to those islands,” CNN meteorologist Chad Myers said.

Evacuations set for Florida

Jimmy Brumbaugh packed up his family in their RV and left Astatula, Florida, for Georgia. As he headed out of town, he posted a picture showing a long line of cars, waiting to get gas.

“People are genuinely scared down here,” he said. “… We are dead center in the state, but I’m not taking any chances. I also don’t want to put my family through the misery of riding out the storm. We’ve done it before, and it’s horrible.”

In Eustis, northwest of Orlando, Pat Arnold and her husband took precautions in case Irma hit.

“My husband and I prepared for Irma by getting some cash out, fueling cars and filling gas cans with nonethanol gas (for use with our chainsaw if needed), … and making sure we have enough batteries, canned food, etc,” she told CNN.

From Miami Beach to Ocala, Floridians braced for the storm, with some posting images of empty shelves at local grocery stores.